On an industry trip to New York six years ago, a group of us found ourselves staying for four nights in a soulless mid-town hotel. Following our noses (and a solid recommendation) we searched out Balthazar for breakfast early on and returned each morning for the duration of our stay. Late on in the visit, we ate at its sister restaurant Pastis in the Meatpacker’s District one afternoon. Suffice to say, it was a memorable highlight of the visit. It felt like a step into a culinary oasis, with each and every dish raised to comfort food perfection. And it is surprising how many people mention Balthazar when you ask about their New York restaurant favourites. But how will Balthazar fare in London now eatery supremo Keith McNally, living with his family in London, has opened a replica branch in London? Would Balthazar London live up to my sepia-tinted memories of the New York experience?

Wednesday evening provided an opportunity to rediscover Balthazar, family in tow. A telephone inquiry about a table found the restaurant following the Brasserie Zedel model of leaving a sizeable proportion of its tables available to the democratic process of the walk-in. At 5.30pm on Wednesday, we pitched up on a promise (“that’s a good time to walk in and find a table”) and we were offered the use of a table until 8pm. First thing that strikes you is how faithfully McNally, backed by ubiquitous sector investor Richard Caring, has replicated the New York version. The nicotine-yellow wall colour, the lighting, the tables, the mirrors, seating and blinds are pretty much identical to New York. Its stand-along bakery next door is an exact match of the juxtaposition of its New York twin bakery-and-restaurant offer.

On Wednesday night, there wasn’t much being left to chance. My count of front-of-house staff at the 178-cover restaurant climbed to over 40 before I gave up. (Industry consultant Mike Palmer reported that he counted 50 staff on Monday evening). McNally was eating near the entrance with his family before he started wandering the room talking to customers, a study in friendliness and civility. (Our waiter rhapsodised about McNally’s approach to staff training and compared the experience negatively with working for Gordon Ramsay for three years).

Perusing the menu and the restaurant, there were things I’d forgotten about the Balthazar experience. This is relaxed brasserie dining done to a very high level with a menu of classics – a French-themed version of the comfort food to be found at The Ivy. There’s a firm focus on minimising the starchiness of high-end eating despite the swanky crustacean and artisan bread display – paper tablecloths, tea towel napkins (seriously) and waiting staff who are clearly encouraged to enjoy interaction with customers. There was absolutely no pressure to make the restaurant’s night by ordering from the wine list. Prices are a small notch up from a Mitchells & Butlers Premium Country Dining Group menu, on a par with The Ivy and thoroughly reasonable for the quality.

We thought we’d cut through any self-induced Balthazar romanticism – my wife is a Balthazar fan by dint of her own New York trip - by pitting a couple of hard-bitten 14 year-old girls against the menu. Tamsin, who rates YO! Sushi as her favourite restaurant, and Rheanna, who gives PizzaExpress her top spot, both ordered chicken paillard and cleared their plates. Tamsin made the mistake of not ordering onion soup as a starter and then compounded her mis-step by repeatedly raiding her mother’s bowl. My steak au poivre was exceptional – on a par with the Josper-cooked rib-eye I ate at Revere Pub Company’s Libertine site last month. The only negatives were a beef stroganoff that was a little dry and an unnecessary mid-meal ritual involving the complete replacement of the paper tablecloth that required a team large enough to perform medical surgery at the complex end of the scale.

Balthazar will be compared over and over to Brasserie Zedel – similar menus served in a similar scale dining room. Brasserie Zedel occupies its own territory though. How is it possible to be serving food of its quality at prices that make JD Wetherspoon look expensive?

Historically, religion and religious value-systems have been vehicles for temperance sentiment. Whilst it is obvious that alcohol is a product vulnerable to levels of misuse which contribute to social problems such as crime and ill-health, what characterises the current UK temperance movement, and its various advocacy groups, is the scale of problem-inflation they engaged in with regard to alcohol’s culpability for these problems. Absolutism is another feature of temperance beliefs - the first sip of alcohol transports the drinker to the top of a slippery slope. Negative health and social consequences of alcohol use have come to be viewed as the typical and inevitable result of even modest consumption. Individuals lacking in self-discipline, able to resist anything except temptation were thus initiating their own descent into an uncontrollable, downward spiral of earthly sin and misery.

This pejorative definition of pleasure, in addition to intensified ideas of rationality and self-control, were, historically, the basic ideological tenets which influenced campaigners against the use of alcohol. Driven by these anxieties about order and control, temperance campaigners were able to construct a causal inevitability which depicted any consumption of alcohol as physically and morally dangerous. If pleasure was theologically suspect and recreational drinking sure to be disastrous, alcohol use came to be constructed as a negative moral absolute.

Despite this powerful ideological message and the movement’s campaigning strength, religiously-inspired temperance in the UK, as a mass movement, had largely died out by the early 20th Century. So, how was it possible that temperance ideas and beliefs were able to survive the demise of the social movement that spawned them, and continue to this day?

Over the course of the 19th Century, the moral crusade of the temperance movement became increasingly secularised. The early temperance movement was very much the property of Nonconformist churches. But increasingly this social movement was adopted by Anglicans, and by the 1870s the Church of England Temperance Society had taken over much of the campaigning momentum.

But towards the end of the 19th Century alcohol licensing also became a major party political issue. The Liberal Party was more inclined toward temperance than the Conservatives (and still is). Many of those involved in the emerging Labour Party promoted temperance as a means to working-class self-improvement.

The temperance agenda became increasingly identifiable within parliamentary parties, and thus in the heart of secular government. The secularisation of the moral crusade enabled temperance ideas to migrate from the religious peripheries and settle in the political mainstream. But increasingly, and to this day, the role of moral entrepreneurs in promoting the moral viewpoint of temperance was taken up outside of Parliament by the medical profession. The torch of moral certainty still burned bright, but it passed from clerics to medics.

The term ‘moral entrepreneur’ is attributed to American sociologist Howard Saul Becker and refers to individuals, groups or organisations that seek to influence society to adopt or maintain certain norms. Individual moral entrepreneurs are people who take the lead in labelling the behaviour of others in a variety of ways, both positive and negative. Social labelling is therefore crucial in creating social norms and in defining what constitutes deviance from those norms.

It is helpful to categorise moral entrepreneurs as rule creators and rule enforcers. If we apply this concept to the UK we see a variety of individuals and advocacy groups who play the role of moral entrepreneurs in relation to the current moral panic over alcohol use: Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, who heads-up the Alcohol Health Alliance, Sarah Wollaston MP and temperance advocacy group Alcohol Concern are all examples of rule-creator moral entrepreneurs. And we’ve all encountered the rule enforcer moral entrepreneur in the form of the local busy-body for whom persecuting licensed premises is a mission!

A social issue emerges as a social problem because moral entrepreneurs construct campaigns in which they name, interpret and dramatise the issues by inculcating rhetorical typologies that invite the public to understand those issues from a particular perspective. The language, imagery and characterisation of the alcohol issue in the UK today is dominated by medical temperance moral entrepreneurs who invite the public and the political class to view alcohol use almost exclusively through the paradigm of ‘problem drinking’.

The success of moral entrepreneurs in de-normalising drinking rests on their ability to label entire groups of drinkers as deviant. ‘Binge drinkers’, ‘chronic drinkers’, ‘underage drinkers’ and ‘delinquent pre-loaders’ are modern folk-devils that populate a pantheon of demons that frighten middle-England because they are characterised as behaving in ways that are morally, medically and socially dangerous and thus constitute a threat to themselves and the rest of society.

The Licensing Act 2003 re-awoke the slumbering temperance beast precisely because it challenged the prevailing ethos of alcohol use as a vice that needed to be strictly controlled. We’ve been on the back-foot ever since.

After spending the whole of my career in the bar and restaurant industry, I joined Mecca Bingo in 2009 as managing director. Rank Group-owned Mecca had struggled in the aftermath of the smoking ban and was in need of a new direction and I was delighted to take on the task. 

One of the first opportunities I identified was food. Mecca along with most bingo operators saw food, at best, as a sideshow and, at worst, an inconvenience. The quality and range of offer was poor, with a lack of thought for what our customers really wanted. There was also a lack of training, support and systems for our front line teams. 

The structure of the game of bingo also did not help with a small interval meaning long queues forming at counters and bars leading to unacceptable waiting times and dissatisfied customers.

Whilst I was confident I had some answers I decided to start with the views of our customers. Rank has built a formidable reputation for its insights work and this was to prove our key strategic benefit.

Mecca has a huge in-built advantage over other businesses where I have worked in that it has a membership system database of nearly a million customers who have visited at least once in the last year. We knew when customers visited, and what day and time. I commissioned extensive research from our insight team on what our customers wanted from Mecca but also what other pub and restaurant brands they admired and used. This research became the foundation on which to build our new menus and service systems. 

One very interesting component of the research is one we call “share of wallet”. It ranked on weekly basis where our customers spent their food leisure pounds. Guess what? Mecca ranked poorly with Greggs, JD Wetherspoon and Costa taking the lion’s share. What stood out was that brands that offer value and quality but had mass market appeal were ones favoured by our customers.

I also personally attended focus groups, which were a huge help in signposting the way forward. At one gathering, we had customers who were loyal and frequent visitors to our clubs but had never eaten with us. They were hard hitting with their feedback but wanted us to mirror the brands that they admired on the high street. 

One customer comment stood out: “Why don’t you put your menus on the tables?” It was blindingly obvious but in the past the decision had been taken not to “clutter” tables. It was a mistake I rectified the following morning!

What followed was a fully integrated programme of service initiatives, new menus, kitchen upgrades, team training , upgraded Epos, lower prices, a new drinks range, better coffee and longer trading hours. 

We didn’t just throw cash at this because many of the changes were easily achieved; we spent about £20,000 per club - some more, some less.

Our most modern clubs we call Full House Destination (FHD). These clubs have a traditional bingo area as well as a modern lounge more akin to a style bar. These lounges attract much younger customers through their design and also we allow customers to talk in the lounge during the games. 

On average our customers are much younger in the lounge - 18 years younger so in their mid to late 30s. These customers required a different solution to their food needs and we have had to address this, for example, with cocktail menus and a late night food offer. 

One interesting development was in wine sales. Prior to our food revolution we sold tiny quantities of wine across our estate, principally in small 175ml plastic bottles. 

Again by following the principles of value, quality and mass market appeal we decided to stock Blossom Hill in its three most popular varieties. The results have been staggering; we have gone from virtually no sales by the bottle to over 300,000 bottles sold in 2012. One reason was a great price point of £6.49, which, don’t mention to Tim Martin, is better value than JD Wetherspoon!

So three years down the line how have we done? Well, the results speak for themselves. In 2008 our F&B sales were £22.2m. Just three years later, we are achieving £26.2m annual sales, a £4m increase. This is more impressive when you know that our prices are lower today than they were three years ago and we have fewer clubs trading (97 today V 103 in 2009) as we re-shape our estate. In our FHD clubs, the weekly sales are close to managed pub levels. For example our Aberdeen FHD achieves weekly sales of close to £16,000 net and has gained a strong food reputation in the local market.

What lies ahead? Well, a real focus for us now is hot drinks. Currently, in most of our clubs we sell tea and coffee at 65p and 75p respectively! So it’s quite a jump to move to, say, Costa. But we have successfully trialled both offers alongside each other and approximately a third of our customers trade up to Costa even at the higher price.

We have just opened our 23rd site as a “Proud to serve Costa” and last week recorded £10,000 net sales across these clubs for the first time. Our aim is for over 40 sites by the summer. 

So what are the lessons we have learnt? The answers were with our customers all along. We listened and we found out where else they were spending their money and on what brands and what products they preferred and applied the appropriate offer. 

Oh, and we put the menus on the tables!

Let’s start by saying normal horsemeat is safe to eat. Lots of people all over Europe eat it. As such in the past couple of weeks some food retailers openly questioned what all the fuss is about. Meat is meat, right? Wrong. The customer is always right. And they don’t want horse when they have asked for beef. Aside from the gamut of regulations that govern correct labelling, the scandal goes to the heart of the collapse of a food company’s brand promise to consumers. The supply chain failure shrieks of cost cutting and lack of scrutiny. Its scale leaves the farm to fork story that the industry is fond of telling in tatters. Replace pictures of farmers tending to cows in an idyllic landscape with cowboys stunning horses in backstreet abattoirs.

It’s not an image the food industry wants customers to linger over. Several major retail and manufacturing brands affected have wanted to be seen to act decisively, announcing their own product test results and where appropriate clearing shelves and sacking suppliers. The catering industry has recently been thrust into the spotlight with the House of Commons pulling various pies and meatballs from the canteen and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) announcing that is to investigate a wider range of products including cafe sandwiches, gelatine, stock cubes and other beef-based foods sold pre-packed or loose. The FSA has said that it will publish the results from all its studies, including brand names. Initial findings will be available from the end of February and the FSA will disclose any formal action taken in April. With the industry benefiting from more and more of us eating out, this is a very important matter to address.

On the broader issue, food campaigners have long been anti ready meals but where do consumers turn if they find out that ‘home cooked’ food in pubs and bars has been compromised by horsey stock cubes? They can’t go home and cook because presumably they are using similar ingredients. Where does this leave the beef industry, rocked in the UK by previous supply chain crisis that led to BSE and foot and mouth? Will some seek to benefit from the crisis and appeal to us to eat more white meat or fish?

Already tempers are beginning to fray. In the UK we have seen supermarkets hit out at local authority purchasers for driving costs down and producers hit out at supermarkets for, er, driving costs down. This squabble is not without foundation – the general public largely buy food on price first, quality second. But such arguments, while fun for the media, are a turn off for the rest of us. If the regulators do end up clamping down and require more stringent industry testing on a wide variety of products then perhaps costs will be passed down the chain to consumers and customers. And what will that do to our resurgent eating out-of-home market?